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Cultural Theory: An Introduction (21st Century Sociology) ISBN: 0631211764 ISBN13: 9780631211761 Cultural Theory: An Introduction (21st Century Sociology) By: Philip Smith Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Format: Paperback Our Price: 21.99

Cultural Theory: An Introduction is a concise, accessible introduction to a complex field. Philip Smith provides a balanced, wide-ranging overview of contemporary cultural theory, covering the major thinkers and key concepts that have appeared and developed over the last century. Assuming no specialist knowledge on the part of the reader, Smith deals with some of the most sophisticated issues in contemporary social thought. Coverage includes fields such as symbolic interactionism, structuralism, and psychoanalysis, and leading thinkers like Foucault, Bourdieu, Habermas, and Giddens. The book has an abundance of special features for students, with summaries, biographical notes, suggestions for further reading, and extensive cross-referencing. For any student or scholar with an interest in the theoretical study of culture and society, this book is an ideal guide.


Contents:

About this Book

 Preface -- What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory? 1

Culture in Classical Social Theory

 2

Culture and Social Integration in the Work of Talcott Parsons

 3

Culture as Ideology in Western Marxism

 4

Culture as Action in Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology

 5

The Durkheimians: Ritual, Classification, and the Sacred

 6

Structuralism and the Semiotic Analysis of Culture

 7

The Poststructural Turn

 8

Culture, Structure, and Agency: Three Attempts at Synthesis

 9

British Cultural Studies

 10

The Production and Reception of Culture

 11

Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics

 12

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Culture and the Self

 13

The Cultural Analysis of Postmodernism and Postmodernity

 14

Postmodern and Poststructural Critical Theory

 References.


Brief Description:

This volume offers an introduction to a frequently marginalized field. The author provides a wide-ranging overview of contemporary cultural theory, covering the major thinkers and key concepts that have appeared and developed over the 20th century.

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